St. Louis to get $400,000 from EPA to clean up polluted sites

Some of the EPA funding will go toward the cleanup of underground storage tanks, like this one at 4266 McRee Ave. in St. Louis. This cleanup was undertaken by the Garden District Commission with funding from the EPA and the Brownfields Cleanup Fund.

(Amy Lampe/SLDC)

The Environmental Protection Agency has awarded $400,000 in grants to the St. Louis Development Corporation. The funds will be used to assess and plan for cleaning up hazardous substances.

EPA Regional Administrator Karl Brooks says the Agency has a long history of working with the SLDC to clean up contaminated properties, also known as brownfields.

“These are usually in the central city,” Brooks said. “These are usually sites that at one time might have been factories, they might have been warehouses, they might have been places where vehicles were built or stored. They’ve been abandoned usually.”

“St. Louis can use these monies to figure out what the contaminants are at a site, then it can take those monies and decide what kind of clean-up efforts are needed to get the contaminants out of there and the property ready for reuse,” Brooks said.

Brooks says the next step is for the SLDC to choose specific locations within the city and develop project proposals for EPA approval.